How to manage conflicts between resources’ exploitation and identity values:The agri valley amid oil supply and the lucanian apennines national park

Abstract

In the mid-1990s, the valley landscape of Basilicata found itself at a crossroads between two contrasting development models. One was based on the supply of hydrocarbons, with a view to starting up a heavily industrialised process, whilst the other drew its inspiration from local development policies, based on nature tourism and high-quality agriculture. Basilicata attempted to find a middle ground, which could respect the principles of ecological, economic and social sustainability in agreement with oil company activity. Twenty years later, the Agri Valley is a far cry from achieving the following two goals for the future, putting itself forward as a model for a sustainable economy and becoming a large-scale centre for energy production. The construction of the biggest onshore extraction plant in mainland Europe in the heart of the Lucanian Apennines National Park is producing a serious environmental impact. If we consider the current political, economic and financial climate, the now well-established cultural concepts of smart growth and the OECD Better Life Index forecast, which considers the well-being industry and the green economy to be the main driving forces for the global economy over the next 20 years, does it still make sense to obsessively consider oil as the areas main driving force for growth? The aim of this contribution is to highlight and discuss the conflicts and paradoxes which stem both from different ways of interpreting the term resource and from the ambiguous nature of identity values in an area where resources exploitation implies deeply contrasting notions of landscapes.